People

Dr Luke Kelly

Luke is a Senior Lecturer in Ecology in the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He enjoys contributing solutions to global conservation problems. His research interests are in ecology and evolution, biodiversity conservation and environmental decision making. Much of his work is focused on understanding animal and plant responses to fire, landscape modification and climate change. This includes doing a mix of field experiments, ecological modelling and scenario analysis.

Dr Kate Giljohann

Email: kmgi@unimelb.edu.au

Kate is a Research Fellow in the School of BioSciences. She is particularly interested in plants, conservation and the ecology of disturbances. Her research encompasses population, community and landscape-level analyses, with a focus on assisting environmental management. In collaboration with the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, Kate is developing a suite of models to enhance the evaluation of alternative fire management strategies for biodiversity.

Julianna Santos

Email: jlsantos@student.unimelb.edu.au

Julianna is a PhD student in the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences. She comes from Brazil, where she studied the ecology and conservation of Neotropical mammals, including the population dynamics and diet of wild cats and several invasive species. She started her PhD in 2019 and has been investigating movement ecology, genetic diversity and population dynamics of small mammals in fire-prone landscapes in southern Australia.

Katharine Senior

Email: senior@student.unimelb.edu.au

Kate is a PhD student in the School of BioSciences. Her PhD research focuses on understanding the impact of fire on mammals and reptiles in the Murray Mallee region of south-eastern Australia. She is using a combination of landscape-scale modelling and large-scale field experiments to explore the mechanisms underpinning faunal responses to fire. She aims to conduct applied research that can inform environmental management and works closely with land managers to achieve this.

Isaac Kreger

Email: ikreger@student.unimelb.edu.au

Isaac is a Masters student in the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences who studies how plant traits, such as bark, influence mortality and survival during and after fire. He is using plant traits to predict vegetation response to fire and to understand how trees survive in fire-adapted landscapes. Isaac seeks to understand how populations will persist in a future of increased fire due to climate and human impacts. He will be conducting vegetation surveys in the semi-arid mallee before and after planned burns applied in the Mallee Fire District of Victoria.

Eliza Thompson

Email: elizat2@student.unimelb.edu.au

Eliza’s current research interests include fire ecology, animal behaviour and wildlife conservation. Eliza graduated from the University of Melbourne in 2018 with a Bachelor of Science (Zoology). Her Masters research focusses on the effects of fire edges (resulting from either prescribed burns or wildfires) on bird foraging and movement. Her study is underway in mallee landscapes of northern Victoria and western New South Wales. She hopes to assist with future decision making for fire management, increase awareness of threatened bird species and provide the drive for more on the ground conservation efforts.

Lily Wheeler

Email: lwheeler1@student.unimelb.edu.au

Lily graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Zoology) at the University of Melbourne in 2018. She is currently studying a Master of Science within the School of Ecosystem and Forest Science. Her research interest is in biodiversity conservation, with a focus on mammal species. In her Masters project Lily is investigating the effect landscape scale properties have on native small mammals within Western-Victoria. Her project has a focus on both fire and vegetation properties and Lily hopes to aid biodiversity conservation within the area by guiding fire management and conservation of endangered species.

Fred Rainsford

Email: 19095517@students.latrobe.edu.au

Fred is currently completing a PhD, based at La Trobe University, investigating the role of fire in shaping the distribution of species in some of Australia’s most fire-prone ecosystems. The main focus of Fred’s research is to understand how the dynamics of fire regimes, climate and environment affect species distributions in disparate ecosystems. Some key areas of investigation include; the post-fire dynamics of habitat development; the differing role of time since fire in shaping the distribution of birds and the influence of spatial aspects of fire regimes in shaping bird distributions. The outcomes of Fred’s research will be used to inform fire management strategies to help conserve biodiversity.

Ella Plumanns Pouton

Email: e.plumannspouton@student.unimelb.edu.au

Ella is a PhD student in the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences. She is investigating the resilience of fire-prone heathlands to changing fire regimes. Ella’s Masters research focused on the influence of season, inter-tree competition and other growth attributes on the productivity of temperate eucalypts. Ella has a background in environmental politics and international relations, and worked as a Teaching Associate for three years in subjects focusing on these topics. She has also worked as an evaluator of government programs in the areas of natural resource management, climate change and emergency management and as a researcher in the not-for-profit sector. Ella is particularly interested in vulnerability, adaptability and resilience of ecological (and social and political) systems to climate change and disaster.